Wire harnesses are customarily assembled by hand since the routing of wires is complicated, must be done precisely, and each wire must be marked individually and uniquely. Recently, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,520,966 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,677,734, The Boeing Company has developed a robotic wire harness assembly system to reduce the labor intensity of the wire harness assembly process. Boeing robotic system selects and measures each wire segment in the harness serially, marks each wire, and usually configures the ends of each wire with appropriate termination devices prior to to laying the wire into its unique position in the harness with a formboard layup robot. This layup robot must acquire (hold) one end of the electrical wire with a suitable tool and convey the wire into its location in the harness. To allow the robot to acquire the wire reliably, the guide of the present invention was developed. The guide positions the wire end (which has a residual curl) in a predetermined position (or known volume) where it can be acquired reliably by the robot.